Articles in category: Cutting-Edge Tech

VR is expected to impact almost every industry and will have professional applications in engineering, science, energy, and entertainment verticals. A foreseeable impact is in the enterprise workstation business, as companies will have to upgrade their visualization machines to be VR-ready. Dell is unveiling three new workstation tower computers that can handle the demanding visuals of VR, which must run at least 90 frames per second in each eye

Evidence suggests it's likely that automation will augment rather than replace most jobs. In the financial services sector, sophisticated algorithms called “roboadvisors” pair with humans to offer investment advice. While many roboadvisors act alone, The Vanguard Group's custom software pairs them with humans, creating a hybrid model that marries algorithmic portfolio planning and relies on human financial advisors to provide a white-glove touch.

Tech-driven automated health data collection obviously opens up tremendous possibilities. But a vast trove of information is useless without the ability to efficiently store, analyze, individualize, and implement this information on a case-by-case basis. Despite any science fiction depictions of super-capable, user-facing robodoctors of the future, this behind-the-scenes legwork is the genuine niche where artificial intelligence can revolutionize health.

Clearly, no sane person or organization wants to see, let alone encounter, runaway AI. However, a base problem is that no one knows where the actual crossover point — the edge or tipping point — exists, and thus we mortals are unlikely to be able to prevent it from occurring. There is a very high probability that we will misjudge where that crossover point is and will thus go beyond the key threshold.

Millions of jobs will be lost to robots in the next few years. Very soon, robots will be replacing humans in top management positions, even up to the CEO level. Today, every day, millions of people already follow schedules or instructions created by software. We may not call these instructions “orders” just yet, but that time will come as the realm of big data and analytics-driven decision moves up in the corporate hierarchy.

There is no question that machine learning is at the top of the hype curve. It’s not just futuristic-looking products like Siri and Amazon Echo. And it’s not just being done by companies that we normally think of as having huge R&D budgets like Google and Microsoft. In reality, nearly every Fortune 500 company is already running more efficiently and making more money because of machine learning. So where is it happening? This article consists of a few behind-the-scenes applications that make life better every day.

A new generation of companies is using drones and big data analytics to streamline infrastructure inspection in industries like mining, oil and gas, and agriculture. In addition to analyzing the current data for risks, utilities can also leverage the information to forecast how much money they should be spending on field work so there are no surprises to the budget. "Drones as a service" is now a booming sector, and the skies are getting crowded with unmanned aerial vehicles designed to vacuum up information.

In the industrial segment, the Internet of Things (IoT) is changing everything, or it soon will: From industrial equipment, to processes and the way people work, to business models and even core requirements, everything is shifting.Few companies exemplify this trend more than 123-year-old industrial titan General Electric (GE), which announced in January that it will pull up stakes from its long-established corporate headquarters in Fairfield, Conn. and move to Boston — home to a large number of universities, enterprises and startups focused on technology and helping to drive the IoT revolution.

According to Gartner, brands should be built around customer experience and not the other way around. The time for “lean back” only experiences is over. Today’s consumer is connected and expects to have their needs met instantly: order instantly, pay instantly and obtain their purchases (almost) instantly. Virtual Reality allows the consumer to be deeply immersed; giving brands the opportunity to deliver unprecedented levels of engagement with their target audience.

There’s a long way to go before computers can understand language. While software like TensorFlow and CNDK are a massive step forward, we need human interaction to get there. At this point we’ve distinguished three levels of AI- Artificial Narrow Intelligence (ANI), Artificial General Intelligence (AGI) and Artificial Superintelligence (ASI).

Robert Bosch is taking on U.S. technology rivals by launching its own cloud computing network to connect up anything from cars to dishwashers via the Internet. Traditional German industrial companies like Bosch are looking to transform themselves from manufactures of equipment to service providers using data generated by their machines.

What keeps software developers up at night, other than coding? The fear that artificial intelligence systems can replace them, according to a new survey. Evans Data Corp., in a survey of 550 software developers, asked them about the most worrisome thing in their careers. A plurality, 29%, chose this answer: "I and my development efforts are replaced by artificial intelligence." Surprisingly, this concern about A.I. topped the second-most identified worry, which was that the platform the developer is working on will become obsolete (23%), or doesn't catch on (14%). A study by Oxford University, The Future of Employment ...

The lifetime of the computer has been marked by an ongoing struggle to communicate with the machine. A move away from “interactive responses” and toward “dialogue,” however, entails more than just a shift in thinking away from menus and keyword detection. Cognitive ergonomics is a design philosophy recognizing that just as an ergonomic keyboard might bend so that the user’s wrists do not have to, a system’s design should bend so that the user’s natural processes for accomplishing a task do not have to.

Ray Kurzweil presented the concept of the singularity to a small group at TED, the idea that computing power advances would ultimately allow thinking machines to advance beyond humans’ ability to advance them, and eventually allow us to “upload” our own consciousness into an eternal ether. But for companies, the singularity has already begun. It has begun through the combination of the unlimited data plume the digital age has created, and the enhanced computing power of layered neural networks: aka big data and machine learning.

There's never any shortage of buzzwords in the IT world, but when it comes to AI, they can be hard to tell apart. There's artificial intelligence, but then there's also machine intelligence. There's machine learning, but there's also deep learning.

Entrepreneurs in developing nations have redefined the words “bootstrapping” and “disruptive,” creating all kinds of businesses that solve major societal problems. These solutions affect hundreds, thousands and sometimes millions of people, and are often developed with few resources and scarce funding.

The confluence of corporate collaboration in creating a new network that can actually facilitate IoT’s tremendous potential is the real source of all the 5G hoopla at Mobile World Congress. With 5G, extremely remote devices and extremely low-power applications could finally be feasibly and constantly connected: exponentially expanding the applicability of IoT models.

ARM has added a wealth of wireless technologies to its arsenal, but has no immediate plans to design a modem for mobile or Internet of Things devices. The company has a huge presence in some areas of wireless technology like with it's Cordio Bluetooth radio or CPU and GPU designs, widely used in smartphones and tablets. A missing piece is a cellular modem that ARM customers could license and put in mobile devices.

Bitcoin has been proclaimed dead 89 times. It has been labeled a Ponzi scheme and a failed experiment. Writers have argued for it to be forgotten and for developers to move on to greener pastures. But moving beyond this rhetoric, it’s not all that difficult to compare the rise of bitcoin to that of another technology: the World Wide Web.

From the employer's perspective, BYOD is an opportunity to enable a happy workforce, make employees more mobile and more motivated, with the associated increases in productivity and talent retention," he said. So what's not to like about BYOD? Given the apparent benefits to both employees and employers, there should have been stratospheric adoption of BYOD across all industries, yet as recently as mid-2013, less than 10 percent of organizations had implemented formal BYOD programs. In the last two years that figure has grown, but some reports suggest it is still no higher than 60 percent. Considering the obvious ...

When it comes to machine learning, the future is already here, but it’s not yet evenly distributed. Taking advantage of breakthroughs in the field can require a lot of work, which is tough for small companies and those without a whole team to build custom applications and algorithms. According to Okta CEO Todd McKinnon, there’s a lot of hype around the potential of machine learning, but companies aren’t actually taking advantage of it. It's similar to how people discussed big data a few years ago. “We think about this a lot, and the most interesting thing ...

Experts have suggested a number of niche industries that will be made more secure by the untamperable data record provided by blockchain technology — including international art dealing, pharmaceuticals and international trade of high-value goods — but to date, very little attention has been given to the potential effects on the real estate market.

Strange times we live in. The world’s biggest financial players and analysts are buzzing about an invention that became famous partly by promising to destroy them. In just a few months, blockchain went from the cause célèbre of crypto-anarchists and tech evangelists to the biggest idea in mainstream banking. The irony is that blockchain gained worldwide prominence because of bitcoin — and many bitcoin supporters think that cryptocurrency spells the downfall of the global banking system. The biggest of these challenges is obvious: Banks today make huge profits on financial transactions. If transfers suddenly became instantaneous and worry-free ...

Robotic enterprise process automation is radically altering the business case dynamics for outsourcing. The theme of this year’s World Economic Forum was the ‘Fourth Industrial Revolution’ with a focus on how global businesses can harness big data and use automation software to streamline operations and grow. The adoption of RPA which eliminates manual effort across business and IT processes, is transforming the face of business operations. It’s spurring an industrial revolution in the back office, replacing unnecessary manual activities and re-imagining processes to drive continual improvement and efficiency.